sincere ’70s rock power ballad from a very divorced-looking guy, the KJ stepped back up. “And next we have ‘It’s Tricky,’ by Run-DMC.”
Run-DMC’s Raising Hell was my first record. One afternoon, I saw guys rapping about math on a kids’ TV show. The next day in my third-grade class, I was talking about how awesome it was, when this white girl named Claire, who wore hoop earrings and was preternaturally cool for an eight-year-old, said, “Oh, you like rap? Do you like DMC?”
I put down my safety scissors that didn’t cut, briefly wondered if DMC was the nation’s capital, then said, “I don’t know.”
“They’re rap.” She smiled. “My babysitter plays their tape.”
I was distraught at the idea of someone knowing about something cool before me. It was my first moment of geeky jealousy. I had to hear this rap group.
That night over dinner, I asked my father if he’d heard DMC. He chewed spaghetti. “Hmm, no.”
And I learned that there was music out there that even Dad, of the infinite records, couldn’t play me.
Later that week, I came home from school and the first thing I saw, propped up on the table in the hall, was this purple-and-green record with two black guys in leather jackets and gangster fedoras on the cover. The guy on the left wore big square glasses and deadpanned the camera, like he’d just made his point and dared you to disagree. The guy on the right had his eyes down, a swing in his stride, nodding, “Mmm hmm,” to back up the guy in the glasses.
What were they talking about?
Dad swooped in from the kitchen and led me over to the stereo, balanced by the living room window on a stack of particleboard crates. “They’re not just called DMC,” he said. “They’re called Run-DMC. I guess that’s their names.”
“Which one is DMC?” I asked.
Dad was already sliding the record out of the sleeve and into his rough brown hands. “I don’t know. The clerk didn’t tell me that.”
He put the needle down and it was just two voices, louder than I was allowed to speak at home. The first guy shouted, “Now Peter Piper picked peppers,” then the other guy chimed in, “But Run write rhymes.”
They went back and forth a couple more times, then these big drums with bells kicked in. Dad moved to block the record player, a habit from years earlier when I’d dance to kids’ music.
I was into it. I’d like to imagine that I started perfectly pop-locking, but I probably just flailed. Grade school me was mad skinny, and let’s start at the top: red mulatto ’fro, untouched by the new hairbrush on my dresser; giant tortoiseshell glasses kinda like DMC’s; a pocket T-shirt, probably turquoise; sweatpants with knee patches; and tie-dyed Chuck Taylors picked by my hippie mother. I was a wild-looking geek.
My mom and I had already bonded over funny books and sticky craft projects at the dining room table, but Run-DMC showed me how interested Dad was when I talked about music. They were the impetus for me asking for my own record player, and Dad pulling his old one from the attic. The beginning of seeking black art, wanting it to teach me lessons about myself.
After a week, I could recite the lyrics to my favorite song, “It’s Tricky,” a capella, but even after years of playing music in front of people, I was nauseated, scared to do it in this bar.
The following things could go down:
1. My high school could assemble for an early reunion and clown me for rapping white, inspiring Lucius to borrow scissors from the bartender and cut my Black Card into long, curly strips.
2. Some rap-hating white guy in overalls could lynch me out back, then Lucius would catch me swinging and slip my Black Card back into my pocket.
3. A scene from a trite comedy, where uptight old people dance to rap, and a grandma character declares something like, “When I get home, I’m going to have Fred put it in his mouth!”
4. I could channel my nerves into an enthusiastic performance where I assert my blackness by karaokeing a rap song, but get ignored by a bar full of middle-aged white folks.
5. I could just do it, and be black. Which I am. Sorta. Or was.
The spotlight made the short stage a boxing ring.
Holding the mic on the other side of his gut, the KJ stopped me with a hand on my arm and said, “Keep it clean, now.”
I told him, “I’ll stick to what’s on the monitor.”
He handed me the mic and disappeared into shadow, followed by the rest of the bar. When Paper Fire played earlier, the whole room took a deep breath as we counted off our first song. Here, there was chatter, and a woman laughing separate syllables, “Haw . . . Haw . . . Haw . . .” over the clink of glasses.
I eyed the torso-high blue screen floating a yard to my right. The first lyrics appeared in white, “This speech is my recital / I think it’s very vital.” There were four beats of shakers redone in dinky MIDI then I started rapping, as, letter by letter, beat by beat, the words turned yellow on the screen. I heard my voice echoing through the PA, deep and sorta nasal, always with a touch of smartassedness, a southern softness in the vowels, sounding white? Black? Maybe both or neither, like a newscaster.
I couldn’t see the crowd, but they’d gone quiet. I stared into the glare, rapping the lyrics that I’d memorized years before, remembering the green rug of my old bedroom, the neighbor’s cream-colored house as seen through the window above the spinning record. As the music faded, I churned butter with my arms, doing a quick Cabbage Patch dance, and the room burst into applause.
I was a black man dancing for the white folks. I was a white guy cheekily doing black dances from ten years ago. I was blacking up by singing a song off the record credited with bringing rap to the suburbs. Even my attempts at acting black were white.
Still, the applause made me proud of myself. But if I smiled too much, the bar would know that crushing a rap song at karaoke wasn’t an everyday thing for me. Plus, I was nervous about what would come next. I made a beeline for the bar, where I’d last seen my bandmates. Tim was smiling admiration and still clapping. Mason had that “frontman watching his bassist get attention” smirk.
I said, “Maybe we should go?” and Russell shook his head and patted me on the back, handing me a fresh drink. My dry mouth wrung water from the whiskey.
A woman began singing a slow country song. I looked for Lucius and felt a touch on the back of my neck. When I turned, a drunk blonde in her early thirties slid her hand to my shoulder like a middle school slow dance and said, “That was just great, brother.”
I started to thank her but she cut me off, “We’re signing you up for more.”
She looked to her left, where one of her friends, also drunk, was looking back and forth between the binder of songs and the sign-up sheet, pen scribbling.
I snuck a peek at Lucius. He was still in his seat, holding up a cognac glass so it glowed in the Christmas lights around the bar mirror. What was blacker? To do the bidding of these women and sing some rap songs, or to tell them to go to hell?
I broke for her friend. “Oh no, I just got done—”
The
